Balance Status Update 4/29/14

Thank you for your feedback everyone.

We just wanted to let you know that we’ve started putting together a balance test map and a balance test extension mod for the Hellion/Hellbat change.

The exact changes for this test map are:
- Removed Transformation Servos upgrade
- Changed Hellion/Hellbat transform requirement to Armory

Please keep in mind these changes are not final, and we may test different and/or additional changes as needed during this testing phase. We’ll let you guys know once again when the map is published. Thank you, and we'll be looking forward to further feedback after you've played with the changes.

We’d like to share our current thoughts and gather more detailed feedback from you on the current state of HotS balance.

PvT
Following the balance patch and then the Season 2 map update, we’re seeing that this matchup has gotten much better. However, we do believe the matchup is still slightly in favor of Protoss. Whether this is actually the case or another balance adjustment is needed remains in question.

ZvT
This matchup may have shifted slightly in-favor of Zerg recently. While we believe full army vs. army-play is fine, Zerg players seem to be getting to the later stages with an advantage more often than not. We’re investigating whether we can make a slight tweak earlier in the game to keep Zerg economy from scaling too quickly.

We believe ZvP is in a good place with a lot of diversity.

While we don’t currently believe that we need to take action hastily, we’d like to continue discussions with you and prepare well-tested changes, if they’re needed. There’s not a clear problem, and we may not issue a balance patch at this time, but we’re constantly on the lookout for signs that we need to get a balance test map going.

With that said, we have a couple of proposed changes that we could test. Please keep in mind, as always, this is an open discussion and nothing is even close to final. We do not yet have a balance test map.

Option 1:
- Terran infantry level 2 upgrade costs down from 175/175 to 150/150.
- Terran infantry level 3 upgrade costs down from 250/250 to 200/200.

The main thought behind this option is to allow Terran to pressure both Protoss and Zerg a bit more, so that they can keep up in army strength throughout the game. As you can see, saving 25/25 per upgrade at level 2 isn’t huge, but because it affects the core Terran army, we believe it will be fairly big in-game.

Option 2:
- Remove the transformation servos upgrade.
- Allow Hellions to transform to Hellbats when Hellbats are enabled with the armory.

This option addresses the concern that PvT is trending better than we expected, and ZvT worse than expected. At this point, we’re fairly certain that Protoss isn’t struggling against Terran (which runs contrary to pro feedback we’ve been receiving), but we’re also receiving pro feedback on ZvT that indicates we might want to have a bigger change lined up.

We saw the strength of not having this upgrade for the transform in the early HotS beta. However, since then, Hellbats have had their damage reduced and require the blue flame upgrade to be at their max strength. The main cool factor of reverting this upgrade is: being able to save the initial Hellions that players use to harass vs. not being able to do so will have a huge impact on the rest of the game. This means that players who are capable of microing well will be rewarded heavily.

Again, we want to hear what you think as we explore the possibilities. Thank you very much for your feedback.